was already on the verge of cracking under the pressure.
"They don't respect me," he complained of the Ecuadorian line cooks.
"Tell them! Tell them I can fire them if I want to." This was not what I
was looking for in a sous-chef. If the cooks were giving him attitude, my
telling them that the guy could fire them was not going to make them
respect him. The fact that Alfredo, alone among all of us, wore a big,
floppy chef's hat on his head (made all the more ridiculous by his limited
height) didn't help, nor did the fact that he was a rather proud
Colombian. The Ecuadorians hated him and razzed him at every
opportunity. When he began mulling aloud the possibility that maybe I
should just put him back on the line and forget about all this sous-chef
stuff, I promptly rescheduled him. He ended up bursting into tears and
going over my head to the oily general manager, begging for his job
back. I was appalled at this ultimate betrayal and reluctantly reinstated
him, swallowing a poison pill I knew in the end would help kill me. This
was a good friend and a good cook, whom I've never hired again. It's a
measure of what pressure can do—and did—to both of us.
The restaurant itself was beautiful. Randy Gerber's Whiskey Bar was
right next door, the outer space-style lobby of the Paramount could be
reached through a side door in the dining room, and the walls were done
in Morandi-inspired murals, warm Tuscan colors against blond,
unfinished wood. The waiters dressed like Vatican Guards. But the most
truly amazing feature of my temporary kingdom was to be found deep in
the bowels of the Paramount Hotel, through twisting catacomb-like
service passageways adjoining our downstairs prep kitchen. If one
squeezed past the linen carts and discarded mattresses and bus trays
from the hotel, and followed the waft of cold, dank air to its source, one
came upon a truly awe-inspiring sight: the long-forgotten Diamond
Horseshoe, Billy Rose's legendary New York nightclub, closed for
generations. The space was gigantic, an underground Temple of Luxor,
one huge, uninterrupted space. The vaulted ceiling was still decorated
with Renaissance-style chandeliers and elaborate plasterwork. The